Serge Betsen smiled a lot yesterday, which made a change from the night in Sydney in November 2003 when tears mingled with the sweat on his battle-scarred features after England had denied France a second consecutive appearance in a Rugby World Cup final. Looking forward to the repeat fixture in Paris tonight, he was smiling when he announced the result of the brain scan he underwent at the weekend - "Nothing there!" he said, pointing to his forehead - and smiling again with a warmth that looked almost like fondness when the name of Jonny Wilkinson, his old adversary, was mentioned.

Oh yes, the 33-year-old flanker said, he had quite recovered from the ferocious hit that left him flattened at the Millennium Stadium last Saturday night, when the world looked on with heart in mouth as the doctors tended his motionless form. He had watched the rest of the quarter-final against the All Blacks on a television set in the medical room with the squad's doctor, his team-mates Lionel Nallet and Rémy Martin, and his wife, and they had jumped about with joy when the famous victory was completed.

"Great moments," he said, made even greater by the knowledge that his recovery would be rewarded with a chance for revenge for the events of four years ago.

"I was very anxious to know if I would be able to train and to play," he continued. The scan had given him hope, and back in Paris a thorough examination at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital on Wednesday had provided the all-clear.

"It was a surprise to be back with the team and to be ready to play the match. If they'd said I couldn't play, I would have said, 'OK, no problem'. I'm not going to play games with my life. But in sport you have a lot of surprises all the time." And one of them, he added, was that "we are living the same moment as four years ago, preparing again for the semi-final of the cup against England".

When his captain, Raphaël Ibanez, spoke of the match this week, it sounded as if he still had a monkey on his back. "It's the kind of match that stays in the memory," the Wasps hooker said. "I don't think it helps much to dwell on it."

There are those who believe that France lost the match three hours before the kick-off, when it started to rain. Although Betsen opened the scoring with a try from the back of a lineout after 10 minutes, Wilkinson was soon beginning the run of three drop-goals and five penalties that provided all of England's points in a 24-7 victory. Frédéric Michalak converted Betsen's try but then proceeded to miss four penalties, three of them from kickable distances, before being replaced with barely an hour gone. Ten minutes before the fly-half's humiliating departure, Betsen had charged into Wilkinson and become the second French player to be sent to the sin-bin.

The mood in the French hotel on Bondi Beach in the days leading up to the match had been so relaxed that it was a shock to see their morale and their strategy distintegrate so comprehensively. But yesterday Betsen was not inclined to look back and blame the weather.

"No, no," he said. "It wasn't the rain. It was simply that England were the best team on the field. There was so much desire and ambition in our team. We really wanted to get to that final, and it was painful to fail. I felt guilty because when I got the yellow card the team was penalised. I do everything I can to help the team, and that was difficult for me. But we were playing against the best team in the world at that moment. That's all. There was nothing we could have done to change that."

After Betsen successfully targeted England's No10 during a Six Nations match in Paris in 2002, he was seen as France's special anti-Wilkinson weapon. Eighteen months later, however, the plan came apart in Sydney. "They directed their game at Wilkinson," he said. "That's how they planned it. I was lucky enough to score a try near the start, but we needed much more than that. It was a collective failure, but it allows us to approach this match with a lot of motivation. This time there will be a collective eagerness to get hold of the thing England have that we don't have - the World Cup."

Did he expect England to use the same tactics? "Yes, I think so. Look at last week's game against Australia. They gave him [Wilkinson] a lot of opportunities to score."

Although it is assumed that Betsen will bear the primary burden in justifying the claim of Dave Ellis, France's English defence coach, to have "got Wilkinson worked out" after the two warm-up matches between the countries, both won by France, he denied the existence of a personal battle. "For us there's no focus on the contest between me and him. It's the media who say that. I'm playing against the best No10 in the world but I'm not the only defender in our team.

"The key to this match is not to make any mistakes or to give him the ball to kick. If we can make fewer mistakes, like we did last week, it's a very important point for the team. But by coming back he's shown everybody that he's the best."

Still the best? "Yes, yes, yes. He's proved that he can be out of the game for three years with so many injuries but still be able to be ready in time for this World Cup. I congratulate him for that. It's an example of professionalism and perseverance."

Despite the euphoria that accompanied their return from Cardiff, this time around the mood in the French camp is more restrained as their minds turn to a semi-final filled with historical echoes. "This match," Betsen promised, his smile fading at last, "will be hard and bitter."

Semi-final survivors

There are 11 survivors, below in bold, from the 2003 World Cup semi-final in tonight's starting sides